


I feel color in my body

by musiclily88



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Based on a Lady Gaga Song, Based on a Music Video, Depression, Driving, Drug Use, Drunk Driving, John Wayne, M/M, Medication, Mental Health Issues, Recreational Drug Use, References to Depression, Self-Medication, Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-22
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-01-23 20:31:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18557305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musiclily88/pseuds/musiclily88
Summary: Running through the red lights // too lit tonight





	1. you wouldn't like it here

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the video for Lady Gaga’s John Wayne and also the movie Deathproof.
> 
> Snapshots, more or less

Louis slides off the roof of the car, folding himself into the front seat through the window. He smiles at Liam, who throws a beer bottle into the back seat.

“Where we going, cowboy?”

“I don’t fucking know, do you?” 

Louis throws his bottle out the open window, smashing it against the dirt road. “Sick.”

Liam takes both hands off the wheel, leaning over to kiss Louis on the mouth. “Damn right.”

:

They met when Louis was a stunt-double and Liam was a stunt-driver.

Specifically, they met when Louis threw himself onto the hood of Liam’s car, spitting on the windshield and grinning wide.

He came out like anything, doing a body-roll off the car onto his hands and knees, gravel be damned.

“Where you heading next, cowboy?” Louis asked, lip split and bleeding onto his chin.

:

So Louis went to prison first, but just for a misdemeanor, and he got time off for good behavior. He was always a fighter, has been since childhood, so he managed to stay solid upon release.

Liam, well. Liam was and is a fighter and forever will be, too.

They’re a pair, they are.

Liam came out not just with bruises but with scars, littered with the things other people would have taken out on him had he not been more than a bit of a fighter.

Louis waited for him in the car, chain-smoking, his gray leather jacket giving him a bit of flair.

Or something.

He yanks the door open, falling into it, into Louis’ lap.

“Hello to you, too,” Louis says, rolling his eyes.

“Hey, cowboy.”

“Where we headed?”

“Hell or the highway?”

Louis laughs.

:

Sick of city games, they keep to the country roads, flinging shit out the windows until Louis spots a road-sign for fireworks, where they purchase a shit-ton of shit they don’t need.

Louis turns to Liam. “I have an idea.”

“Warning sign, but, k.”

“Ships-master?”

Liam gives a heavy sigh. “Only if you carry all this shit to the car.”

:

Louis packs all the fireworks into the backseat of the car, grabbing his beat-up leather belt that has seen too many teeth-marks. “You got another belt, babe?”

“Give me a lighter and I’ll give you an answer.”

Louis huffs, handing over the last of his lighters. Liam kisses him hard, grasping both their hands together.

“Guess you do.”

:

Louis clamps the belts between the front-door frames of the car, letting the tail hang so that he can clutch it and slip onto the hood of the car with them firmly in his grasp.

He likes the feeling. He likes lying against the windshield, likes the feeling of wind in his face, like the fact that he might lose control at any moment.

Gripped so hard, he nearly doesn’t hear Liam calling him.

“I’m fine!”

Liam slows regardless, pulling over to the side of the dirt road. “Time to release.”

Louis rolls off the hood of the car, cackling as he does so.

:

Louis topples lazily into the passenger seat, crawling across the console to sit in Liam’s lap. They drive to a nearby bar, neon sign bright even from a distance, and Louis catches Liam’s hand easily, eyeing up the bikers by the door. He tilts his chin up, raising a brow.

They don’t react, and Liam yanks on Louis’ hand a bit, making him turn. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You know it, baby.”

:

They leave at three, neither fit to drive, but Liam drops himself into the car and grins as he shoves the key into the ignition. It takes a few tries, but then it hits home, and they’re good to go.

So to speak.

:

Louis wakes up in a shitty motel, unsurprising, with an unlit cigarette tucked in his hand.

Liam is nowhere to be found.

 

Louis waits on the chair outside their room, chain-smoking and working his way through a six-pack until Liam wanders his way back to their room.

“Where were you?”

“I—I’m actually not sure,” Liam admits, flopping down onto the sidewalk right by Louis. 

Louis laughs, knocking backwards onto the sidewalk, cigarette still in his lips. His head hits the ground, a little too hard, and he starts to see stars above his head.

“I’m seeing stars.”

Liam sings, “The stars are bright tonight,” and then he laughs loudly.

:

Louis sleeps the entire night on the concrete, starfished across the sidewalk.

 

He eventually rolls over before feeding a dollar into the vending machine. He gets some chips and his change before heading back into their room. He showers with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in his mouth, tossing the can. It hits the shower-curtain, and Louis snorts, watching it fall back down by his feet.

The chip bag, which he forgot about, is in the sink, unopened.

“Liam!” he calls, cigarette clamped tight in the corner of his lips.

“What!” Liam yells from the bed, sounding rough.

“Are you holding?”

“I thought you were!”

“Fuck,” Louis mutters, ripping open the bag of chips. “I’ll make a call.”

:

 

They end up on the roof of the motel. Liam sits down on the edge of the roof, swigging from a beer can. He dangles his legs over the edge, kicking randomly into the air.

“Wait. How’d we get up here?” Louis asks, lying down behind Liam, far away from the edge.

“No idea.”

“How we gonna get down?”

“Jump, I guess.”

Louis snorts. “You go first so you can break my fall.”

 

They smoke for a while until Liam gets bored. He tries the door to the roof, but it won’t open. “I think it locked behind us.”

“Fuck.” Louis’s dazed as hell, staring at the sky and blinking lazily. “What do we do, then.”

 

Liam climbs down the side of the building, fingers slipping on the painted bricks as his boots slide down, too. He falls on his ass, laughing as he falls the last four feet down.

“You break your butt, bro?” Louis yells, leaning over the small ledge that separates the roof from the air.

“Probably!” Liam yells, standing up. He swipes at his elbow, which is scraped and bleeding, and then he licks the blood off his hand. “I think that was a bad idea!”

“Yeah, probably!” Louis agrees. “You gonna catch me or something?”

“I figured I’d, like. Ask someone to come get you.”

“You do know that—” Louis stops talking when Liam leaves his line of vision. His voice trails off. “The number for the lobby is on that sign right there,” he says, sighing as he lights up another cigarette. “You coulda just called down.” He inhales. “Maybe that’s too easy,” he mutters as an angry front-office worker throws open the door to the roof, face murderous.

Louis laughs.

:

 

They go for a drive that night, headed wherever, stopping at a liquor store to get a twelve-pack. Louis sits it on the passenger seat before crawling into Liam’s lap as he drives.

“I can’t see when you do that,” Liam murmurs, curling one hand around Louis’ hip. He digs his fingers in deep.

“Yeah, that’s the point.”

“What, to kill us both?”

Louis licks hips bottom lip. “All eyes on me.”

 

The front bumper doesn’t make it out that night, as they leave it in the rearview.

:

They eat at a greasy-spoon the next morning, both coming down and hungover as fuck. It’s close enough that they walked there rather than driving, which Louis regretted within thirty seconds because he was thirsty and sweating bullets, all at the same time.

Louis eats half his meal before rushing to the bathroom to puke. He feels better after, but he’s shaky as he walks back to the table.

“Okay, cowboy?”

He shrugs, finishing the rest of his food and chugging an early-morning beer. He snakes his hand across the table to grasp at Liam’s.

 

That afternoon, they swim in the motel pool, Liam stripping down to his boxers as Louis does a nude canon-ball into the water.

 

Later, Louis rifles through Liam’s duffle looking for something to wear, his own clothes tossed around the motel room floor. When he hits the bottom, he finds two orange bottles, each half-full of pills he knows Liam isn’t taking.

He palms open one bottle, fishing out six pills that he swallows dry.

Before closing the bottle, he pulls on a pair of Liam’s shorts. Tossing the bottles across the room, he reaches for the vodka bottle, necking straight from it.

 

He wakes up hours later. Liam’s gone, his duffle’s gone, his keys and meds are gone, but hey. The vodka’s still there.

And so is Louis.

 

He waits for the bail call.

It never comes.


	2. let's be alone together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> be alone together

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Got some requests for chapter 2, and I had a hankering to continue it, so, lo and behold, there is a second part! Based on Lady Gaga's song John Wayne.

For the life of him, Louis cannot find their car. He sighs, assuming that Liam took it away somewhere.

He starts to walk.

He’s got the vodka bottle in one hand and his bag slung over his other arm. He feels like a hobo, but he’s not exactly stick-and-bindling it, since he has cash in his pocket, though it’s kind of burning a hole.

He walks by a second-hand car shop, grinning so hard he thinks his lips might split at the end.

 

Louis leaves with a motorcycle he probably can’t afford, squeezing the clutch with the hand not holding the vodka bottle.

When the bottle is empty, he tosses it away, listening to it smash as he rolls the throttle.

:

He has no real destination in mind, so he sets out aimlessly. He stuffs his shit into saddlebags he eventually buys at a thrift shop, once his backpack falls apart from wear and tear.

He misses three calls from his sister one day because he’s too busy enjoying the bright-green fields on the sides of the two-lane highway he’s motoring down. His hair’s gotten long, and it whips around his ears and into his eyes. He thinks he’ll have to find his headband somewhere, hoping Liam didn’t steal it when he left.

The thought leaves his head as soon as he fishes his phone out of his bag and sees seventeen notifications in all.

:

In the parking lot of a motel sporting a neon-green vacancy sign, he reads through ten texts from all of his sisters, two texts from his mom, three phone calls from Lottie specifically, and two texts from Mark.

The texts are hard to read on his cracked screen, but the voicemails from Lottie are clear:

Mark’s gone.

:

Louis checks into the motel and drops his stuff onto the bed, phone hot inside the back pocket of his jeans. He can’t bring himself to open it, so he flops down on top of his bags, head dropping sideways onto one pillow.

He falls asleep.

He sleeps for five hours.

 

Louis has eleven missed calls and twenty-two texts when he wakes up. He sighs, swiping his phone open to return the most recent call, ignoring the texts.

“Lots?” he says before getting a _hello._ “What’s going on?”

“Mark left.”

“He what?”

“He left.”

Louis sighs.

“Pretty much,” Lottie agrees, heaving a sigh of her own. “Come home?”

:

He manages to make it home seventeen hours later. He doesn’t knock at the front door, but throws it open and tosses his bags inside. Daisy’s by the front stairs and tosses herself at him, hugging his neck hard.

“Thank you.”

“Like I’d be anywhere else.”

He’d rather be anywhere else.

 

Daisy and Phoebe crawl in to bed with him that night. He curls one arm around each of them, and he doesn’t sleep the entire night.

:

He does the grocery shopping, housekeeping, and assorted chores for a week, until he remembers the reason he left home in the first place.

He loves his family, but he hates staying in one place.

 

It takes two weeks for him to leave, and Daisy and Phoebe sleep in his room every night.

 

Because he is the way he is, he leaves the way Mark did: before sunlight.

He leaves a note on the kitchen counter, like a coward, and that’s that.

:

 

Two nights later, Louis wakes up screaming.

 

He calls Liam, because he can’t help himself, and then he texts a few times, because he wants to.

He feels helpless, feels like a balloon set free over the fucking ocean.

To his surprise, Liam calls him back.

 

“Hey.”

“Yeah, hi. I’m in the hospital.”

“You’re fucking what now.”

“Yeah, I’m in the hospital?

“You’re in the fucking hospital.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re what?”

“I’m in the fucking hospital, Louis! Christ!”

“All right, god. I’ll—I’ll come fucking get you.”

“Don’t bother,” Liam says as he hangs up.

 

Liam calls again later, but Louis ignores it, just like he ignores the next three calls and five texts. He counts on his fingers each time.

He books into a different motel, one somewhere in the Dakotas, and he hides for a while.

:

The curb outside the motel isn’t very comfortable, but Louis makes do.

Liam finds him, undoubtedly, because Louis is hopeless.

“How’d you get here?”

“Hitchhiked.”

“No, I mean—”

“I pinged your phone, you moron.”

“I’m not the moron, you moron.”

Liam rolls his eyes. “You know you are.”

Louis stubs out his cigarette on the asphalt, moving to stand. “What’d you do, then?” he asks, curling one hand around Liam’s left hip.

Liam sweeps his hair away from the crown on the right side of his scalp, showing five staples along his hairline. “Fucked myself up.”

Louis reels backwards. “Sure as shit did.” He bites at the inside of his lip. “Thought you left me.”

Liam laughs, sweeping his hair back across his forehead. “Like I would.”

“You could.”

“Like I would,” Liam repeats, laughing softly.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: musiclily
> 
> STICK AND BINDLE!!!!!!!!! A weird piece of knowledge I know!!!!!! My favorite piece of art I have ever made involves a stick-person holding a stick-and-bindle.


End file.
